Apt 34 Bar Brings NYC House Party to Downtown St. Petersburg

A new beer and wine bar taking shape at 554 1st Avenue North in downtown St. Petersburg is not just borrowing a New York theme — it is rebuilding an actual apartment where founder Nico Leeper once lived. Apt 34 takes its name and its blueprint from Leeper's real former unit, Apartment 34 at 312 West 48th Street in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, where he lived with roommates from 2015 to 2024 and hosted a rooftop scene so beloved it earned its own name.

That rooftop, known as the 312 Roof Club, hosted barbecues, piano concerts, political rallies, Derby Day parties, charity fundraisers, pool parties and wedding receptions over the years, according to St Pete Rising. Leeper and his friends outfitted the space with couches, chaise lounges, planters, trees, astroturf and a nine-by-ten-foot inflatable pool, plus a neon sign bearing the club's name. At its peak, the group's annual black-tie Christmas party drew 250 to 300 people, and friends eventually occupied 12 of the building's 36 apartments.

Rebuilding an Apartment, Not a Bar

Leeper is bringing pieces of that original space to St. Petersburg, including the original 312 Roof Club neon sign and the actual door from his former bedroom, the outlet reports. The design team behind the buildout, per the same account, set out to design an apartment rather than a bar — the layout will include a lobby with a vintage apartment mailbox, a living room with couches and a mantle, a kitchen area with a bar resembling a kitchen island, and a private bedroom booth with a daybed.

The roof area will feature soaring ceilings, patio furniture, bistro lights and star-like lighting, echoing the rooftop gatherings that defined the original apartment. Notably absent will be a DJ booth, and the bar's lone television will typically stay off — a deliberate choice, according to the report, to keep the focus on conversation rather than screens. Bartenders will also skip USB chargers at the bar, another nod to keeping the atmosphere social rather than plugged in.

A Career Detour That Led Back Home

Leeper, who grew up in Crescent Heights and attended Canterbury School and Columbia University in New York City, spent years in finance and startups before pivoting to hospitality. He worked at equity crowdfunding startup SeedInvest from 2014 until 2021 — a company that, according to entity background material from StartEngine, accepted fewer than 2% of startup applicants before StartEngine acquired it in May 2023. He later spent nearly two years bartending at a neighborhood bar and worked at Bar Chinchilla in December 2024, as well as at Try Wine and Tampa Bay Drinkery, before returning to St. Petersburg in 2024, per St Pete Rising's reporting. Leeper was born at Bayfront, giving the homecoming an added personal thread.

Executing the vision falls to Storyn Studio, the architecture firm founded by Haitian-American architect Everald Colas that has also designed the Moxy St. Pete hotel and the planned 40,000-square-foot Woodson African American Museum of Florida, according to a v2com newswire release. Leeper is working on the design alongside Evan Vander Ploeg, an associate principal registered architect at Storyn Studio per the firm's own site, who has known Leeper since they were two years old and visited him in New York, attending parties at the original Apartment 34.

Beer, Wine and a Host-First Bar Team

Apt 34 will feature 16 taps split evenly between beer and wine, serving most of its wine on draft alongside local and craft beer poured into reusable red solo-style cups, St Pete Rising reports. The bar will operate under Florida's 2COP license, which authorizes beer and wine sales for on-premises consumption and sealed package sales without requiring food revenue minimums or quota license purchases, according to Permit Place. The bar will not offer food when it first opens, though Leeper is considering collaborations with local chefs and hopes to eventually introduce cicchetti.

Staff will be trained to act as party hosts more than traditional bartenders, described in the outlet's reporting as host first, bartender second — controlling the playlist based on the room, with quieter music earlier in the night giving way to something more energetic later. Beyond regular service, Apt 34 may host trivia, bingo, live music and theme nights, along with occasional Derby Day and Christmas parties echoing the rooftop traditions that inspired the concept. Leeper has said he opened Apt 34 to create a place where people of different ages and backgrounds can connect and feel they belong, according to the report, with the bar's motto — come as you are — reflecting that goal.

Joining an Evolving Nightlife Block

Apt 34 is set to open later in 2026, potentially slipping into early 2027, in a 1,444-square-foot storefront within a 6,000-square-foot commercial building constructed in 1925, according to a LoopNet listing. The space was delivered to Leeper in shell condition and previously housed Inoculum Ale Works, which opened in 2018 as Florida's first sour-only craft beer taproom, per the Tampa Bay Times' historical coverage of the location, before it closed.

Next door sits St. Pete Brewing Company, which opened in 2014 following the city's 2012 legalization of microbreweries and expanded in September 2021 with an adjacent lounge called The Nest, as Hoodline previously reported. Apt 34 arrives as part of a wider shift on 1st Avenue North toward atmospheric, concept-driven lounges, joining spots like Easy Tiger, a vinyl hi-fi listening lounge further down the street, and following the March 2026 debut of Delicious, an interactive wine-tasting lounge in the Warehouse Arts District. The 500 block sits within the city's DC-1 downtown core zoning district, near the luxury tower Residences at 400 Central, which adds more than 300 residential units to the immediate area — density that continues to fuel demand for new neighborhood gathering spots in the urban core.